I’m at the mall, sitting on a bench and watching people go by. It’s a little like fishing. Yet fishing involves a kind of hope. And hope causes me to fret and make up yarns about the great things that happened at the mall. So I’m just sitting and marveling that four hundred million years ago a slimy thing wiggled from the ocean onto the shore, and despite setbacks, morphed into those teenage boys with their butt cracks showing, that man whose blazer won’t quite button, and that long-legged woman who clicks by in spiked heels.

Now, from out of nowhere, a nice woman with thicker legs asks if she can share my bench. So, we sit together. And after a while, she offers me a Junior Mint and tells me a story about how, in her younger days, she had a show dog that learned to slouch because it was an inch too tall to win first place. “Poor thing,” she said. “It tried so hard and never won a thing.” And there you go. With no hope and no bait, I land a good story and a Junior Mint.

one way to attract
a fluttering white butterfly:
sit still with hands open

Bio: Dan Gilmore